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Colin Powell via COVID. Surprised and somewhat shaken.
Bleh he was a shit-sack, whitewashed My Lai and delivered the Iraq invasion.
Fuck Israel
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He was one of the most influential post-Cold War American military leaders. As far as domestic politics goes, he was a beacon of stability in a sea of madness. An inspiration to non-white Americans and those among them who aspire to military and political leadership. Never a partisan, he endorsed Obama and I believe denounced Trump early on.
whilst i don't strictly disagree with your summary, you're definitely whitewashing (ahem) the reputation of a 'military leader' who took america into a total and unmitigated disaster. that's not nothing.
'beacon of stability'
i'm also looking forward to the day (year? century?) when we can properly appraise the political careers of minority figures. condoleeza, powell and obama probably had a slight invulnerability to scrutiny because of their 'racial' credentials. and i am tired of people telling me that the current tory government are 'the most inclusive ever'. i'd prefer a white home secretary to the sadistically cruel priti patel. it's a real weakness of liberal thinking to guess that putting a person of colour in a suit in congress is automatic 'progress', especially when they're delivering neo-imperial failed ventures.
'beacon of stability'
i'm also looking forward to the day (year? century?) when we can properly appraise the political careers of minority figures. condoleeza, powell and obama probably had a slight invulnerability to scrutiny because of their 'racial' credentials. and i am tired of people telling me that the current tory government are 'the most inclusive ever'. i'd prefer a white home secretary to the sadistically cruel priti patel. it's a real weakness of liberal thinking to guess that putting a person of colour in a suit in congress is automatic 'progress', especially when they're delivering neo-imperial failed ventures.
Last edited by uziq (2021-10-18 07:15:06)
Not absolving him of responsibility or anything, but the Powell stuff at the UN was a joint fumbling of the Bush administration.
longish:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/arti … e-failure/
Reading these interviews and what tidbits of behind the scenes stuff gets out just makes you wonder what the heck these people thought was going to happen. They can't all be stupid, so the inclination is to wonder what all was done on purpose.
(e: not to be taken as a "9-11 was an inside job" post)
longish:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/arti … e-failure/
Reading these interviews and what tidbits of behind the scenes stuff gets out just makes you wonder what the heck these people thought was going to happen. They can't all be stupid, so the inclination is to wonder what all was done on purpose.
(e: not to be taken as a "9-11 was an inside job" post)
Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2021-10-18 07:46:50)
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Considering we still have a lot of people old enough to remember the almost exclusively white republican administrations of um Donald Trump, you might be waiting awhile. Trump...what a setback. I was going going to say Reagan or Nixon but the negative psychic energy of that man totally reset the progress meter.
But yes, he did help lead America into the disaster of Iraq but most Americans supported that disaster and it while it was wrong for Bush to harness the post-9/11 paranoia into a war on a semi-innocent country...we didn't do 9/11 on ourselves. The "Islamic world", whatever the hell that is, needs to bare some responsibility for the fact that their conflicts consistently drag all of the major powers of the world into them. The IRA didn't do 9/11 because they were angry at our support for the U.K. meanwhile thousands of New Yorkers got obliterated at work because Arab extremists were upset that we support Israel, a state no more divisive than the British Empire at its height.
But yes, he did help lead America into the disaster of Iraq but most Americans supported that disaster and it while it was wrong for Bush to harness the post-9/11 paranoia into a war on a semi-innocent country...we didn't do 9/11 on ourselves. The "Islamic world", whatever the hell that is, needs to bare some responsibility for the fact that their conflicts consistently drag all of the major powers of the world into them. The IRA didn't do 9/11 because they were angry at our support for the U.K. meanwhile thousands of New Yorkers got obliterated at work because Arab extremists were upset that we support Israel, a state no more divisive than the British Empire at its height.
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My last defense of: C.P...I don't expect the bitterness about Iraq to stick. Or at least the criticism needs to be better pitched. Quoting fake numbers of dead Iraqis...who fucking cares? The Muslims are perfectly capable of starting wars of genocide against each other far more bitter than anything we ever did. And my sympathy for Iraqis ran out when they shot up Paris. Millennials in Paris nightclubs...the obvious ones who are to blame for...France wasn't part of the Iraq War.
I would have to concur that the Iraq invasion is a massive stain on Powell's record. Otherwise he has struck me as an intelligent and competent leader, certainly one of the more capable and respectable people in a position of power during the Bush years.
I'm actually surpriseduziq wrote:
i'm also looking forward to the day (year? century?) when we can properly appraise the political careers of minority figures. condoleeza, powell and obama probably had a slight invulnerability to scrutiny because of their 'racial' credentials. and i am tired of people telling me that the current tory government are 'the most inclusive ever'. i'd prefer a white home secretary to the sadistically cruel priti patel. it's a real weakness of liberal thinking to guess that putting a person of colour in a suit in congress is automatic 'progress', especially when they're delivering neo-imperial failed ventures.
Last edited by Larssen (2021-10-18 12:18:09)
I'm pretty sure I've seen the same sentiment from zeek before. I don't think it contradicts anything. I don't think POC in high offices should be paraded as "progress" because POC, without taking into consideration stuff like qualification, performance and policies. I do think BLM folk are justified in wanting police to be less violent. I think police should be less violent. I don't think people should be murdered in custody. I don't think old men should be slammed into sidewalks.
re: cp stuff, see link above. cp acknowledges that, but it definitely looks like he was a cog in the machine handed the task by some joint effort involving elements including intelligence and the office of the vice president. i'm not really satisfied with just settling on him as the fall guy. all this post-mortem clarity people are having one way or the other comes off a little sour.
re: cp stuff, see link above. cp acknowledges that, but it definitely looks like he was a cog in the machine handed the task by some joint effort involving elements including intelligence and the office of the vice president. i'm not really satisfied with just settling on him as the fall guy. all this post-mortem clarity people are having one way or the other comes off a little sour.
Thanks in large part to the lies told by, er, Powell.SuperJail Warden wrote:
but most Americans supported that disaster
Fuck Israel
colin powell was the secretary of state. You can't tell me he wasn't involved in the decision-making pipeline wrt Iraq from start to finish. The very nature of his position demanded that he was in the loop.
Of course. As one of the guys at the top, he shares responsibility for sure. But I think it's a little idiotic to believe that he undermined the country's credibility, in a vacuum.
No-one has suggested it was him alone in a vacuum.
Goebbels wasn't a patsy, nor was Powell.
Goebbels wasn't a patsy, nor was Powell.
Fuck Israel
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Agreed.unnamednewbie13 wrote:
I don't think POC in high offices should be paraded as "progress" because POC, without taking into consideration stuff like qualification, performance and policies.
WRT C.P., Did he advance, even inadvertently, American minorities interest or not? It's not like they made him the black sheriff who oversaw mass shooting of BLM protesters. I don't think I need to go into detail the differences between Arab Muslims in the Middle East, and black and brown Americans and how their interest diverge.
I know it isn't a good thing to accuse faceless usernames of being "Gen Z who don't remember what American culture was like before 2008" but I got a feeling that a lot of the people denouncing him are Gen Z who don't remember what American culture was like before 2008. KiDs ThEsE dAyS forget they live in a world much different than when Powell was talking to the U.N.unnamednewbie13 wrote:
re: cp stuff, see link above. cp acknowledges that, but it definitely looks like he was a cog in the machine handed the task by some joint effort involving elements including intelligence and the office of the vice president. i'm not really satisfied with just settling on him as the fall guy. all this post-mortem clarity people are having one way or the other comes off a little sour.
Once again, not pardoning CP of his role in matters. I oppose what I now see as a lopsided focus on him in the wake of his death. Especially useless now that he is dead and cannot be called to task.Dilbert_X wrote:
No-one has suggested it was him alone in a vacuum.
Goebbels wasn't a patsy, nor was Powell.
SoS is defined as the president's chief advisor on foreign affairs in addition to other administrative, advisory, and diplomatic roles. But the president was not being influenced solely by CP on this matter. And the SoS is not the president's boss.
Why was that speech so important? And what was it like walking into that hall?
You have to remember that at the time I gave the speech on Feb. 5, the president had already made this decision for military action. The dice had been tossed. That’s what we were going to do. The Congress had passed a resolution three months before that speech that essentially gave the president the authorization to do it. Overwhelmingly they voted for it, and it was on the basis of that National Intelligence Estimate. The president had been using these very significant points about biological vans and chemical weapons in his speeches and in the State of the Union address. There was really nothing in my speech that hadn’t already been covered in the State of the Union or other speeches.
The reason I went to the U.N. is because we needed now to put the case before the entire international community in a powerful way, and that’s what I did that day.
Of course walking into that room is always a daunting experience, but I had been there before. And we had projectors and all sorts of technology to help us make the case. And that’s what I did. I made the case with the director of central intelligence sitting behind me. He and his team had vouched for everything in it. We didn’t make up anything. We threw out a lot of stuff that was not double- and triple-sourced, because I knew the importance of this.
When I was through, I felt pretty good about it. I thought we had made the case, and there was pretty good reaction to it for a few weeks. And then suddenly, the CIA started to let us know that the case was falling apart — parts of the case were falling apart. It was deeply disturbing to me and to the president, to all of us, and to the Congress, because they had voted on the basis of that information. And 16 intelligence agencies had agreed to it, with footnotes. None of the footnotes took away their agreement.
So it was deeply troubling, and I think that it was a great intelligence failure on our part, because the problems that existed in that NIE should have been recognized and caught earlier by the intelligence community.
CP Consistently refused to be questioned on any of this.unnamednewbie13 wrote:
Especially useless now that he is dead and cannot be called to task.
I don't believe a word of that explanation, CP was in on all of it and yet he points the finger at everyone else.
There are various Freudian slips that give the lie.
Fuck Israel
The explanation, while probably never the unaltered truth, makes more sense than the idea that CP was the mastermind running the show and leading the president, vp, congress, and intelligence community around by the nose. People are dumping on him especially now because his name was brought to the forefront by his death and they don't have the balls to dump on parts of W's administration who are still alive.
But sure, give yourself a pat on the back for reaffirming club membership until the press loses interest again.
But sure, give yourself a pat on the back for reaffirming club membership until the press loses interest again.
No-one has claimed he was the mastermind, pretty clear he was up to his neck in orchestrating an illegal war based on lies - at the same time as carefully stacking up his get out of jail cards.
Facebook reminded me of this today
Pretty clear he was the 'trustworthy salesman' and he knew what he was doing.
Facebook reminded me of this today
Pretty clear he was the 'trustworthy salesman' and he knew what he was doing.
Last edited by Dilbert_X (2021-10-18 18:01:49)
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Dilbert_X wrote:
No-one has claimed he was the mastermind, pretty clear he was up to his neck in orchestrating an illegal war based on lies - at the same time as carefully stacking up his get out of jail cards.
Facebook reminded me of this today
Pretty clear he was the 'trustworthy salesman' and he knew what he was doing.
And for like the 15th time, I'm not saying that he was some clueless participant. Not excusing his participation. But you still think it necessary to bring up fucking Goebbels as an analogy, almost as if I were. lolDilbert_X wrote:
No-one has claimed he was the mastermind, pretty clear he was up to his neck in orchestrating an illegal war based on lies - at the same time as carefully stacking up his get out of jail cards.
Facebook reminded me of this today
Pretty clear he was the 'trustworthy salesman' and he knew what he was doing.
Social media rn is full of Colin this, Colin that. What about all the other actors, are we just going to forget about them?
Larssen wrote:
colin powell was the secretary of state. You can't tell me he wasn't involved in the decision-making pipeline wrt Iraq from start to finish. The very nature of his position demanded that he was in the loop.
This is additive. "As long as we're on the same page" fare.unnamednewbie13 wrote:
Of course. As one of the guys at the top, he shares responsibility for sure. But I think it's a little idiotic to believe that he undermined the country's credibility, in a vacuum.
e:
Perhaps a malleable way to put it. To be perfectly clear with definite finality, I didn't write that in the sense that he's a patsy. But as a part of white house (including pres, vp), etc. machine that got us into this mess, which should be afforded as much scrutiny as a whole as for individual parts.re: cp stuff, see link above. cp acknowledges that, but it definitely looks like he was a cog in the machine handed the task by some joint effort involving elements including intelligence and the office of the vice president. i'm not really satisfied with just settling on him as the fall guy. all this post-mortem clarity people are having one way or the other comes off a little sour.
Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2021-10-18 18:25:55)
No-one is forgetting anyone else, my god.
"cog in the machine handed the task"
You don't get a spot in a neo-con white-house if you're a free-thinking socialist.
"cog in the machine handed the task"
You don't get a spot in a neo-con white-house if you're a free-thinking socialist.
Fuck Israel
"nobody's saying that he was a free-thinking socialist omg"
Holy hell.
Also,Perhaps a malleable way to put it. To be perfectly clear with definite finality, I didn't write that in the sense that he's a patsy. But as a part of white house (including pres, vp), etc. machine that got us into this mess, which should be afforded as much scrutiny as a whole as for individual parts.
"As long as we don't lose sight of," not "you've all lost sight of."This is additive. "As long as we're on the same page" fare.
Holy hell.
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Newbie is really out here defending the War on Terror but hating dogs. Really makes you wonder what this gamma man's agenda is.
Yeah, I don't think any of what I wrote these last couple pages can be interpreted as defending the war on terror. If anything, I would like to grouse at people (and not specifically this thread) not being critical enough.
I wonder how many stern retrospectives of CP I can look forward to in the coming days from the same people who talk fondly of that one time W offered candy to Michelle.
I wonder how many stern retrospectives of CP I can look forward to in the coming days from the same people who talk fondly of that one time W offered candy to Michelle.